Social Media Terms

You’ve probably heard the word but maybe you’re not sure – just what are hashtags? A hashtag looks like # and is used on Twitter to identify your tweet as part of a particular conversation. When Charlie Sheen was so famously at the height of his bad boy behaviour, he coined the term WINNING to describe his take on events. #Winning took on a life of its own on Twitter, although it usually indicated that the tweet had something of a joke in it, and often one at the expense of someone who seems somewhat divorced from reality.

Hashtags are often used during conferences and during Twitter chats (see definition) for two reasons:1. To make everything said in one conversation identified with a hashtag searchable and 2. To create a bit of buzz around a particular idea or event.

There is a site called Hashtag.org which lists the often used hashtags for more commonly used phrases, like “customer service” or #custserve in the Twittersphere.

By nature, people love to build communities. Twitter is no exception. So when likeminded people gather on Twitter to discuss things they care about, it’s not unusual for them to say “hey, we should explore this more indepth and maybe even regularly.” So what is a Twitter Chat? Generally, it’s a gathering on Twitter at a particular day and time (often recurring weekly) to talk about a particular subject of common interest. That, in a nutshell, is what Twitter chats are: groups of people gathering at the same time and day each week to talk about something that matters to them collectively. Their conversations are no more private than any ordinary time on Twitter but the hashtag (#) is a way of distinguishing all tweets around a particular chat and making the content of that chat searchable after the fact.